Finding the key to his apartment and the key to his car in the envelope didn’t really surprise her. What undid her was the note. “I’m not very good with words, so I’ll keep it simple. I love you. Come live with me. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”
Her heart did a kettledrum-level pitty-pat. She could hear it in her ears.
She didn’t cry. She bawled. Overwhelmed with joy and fear.
Refraining from rushing to his apartment and tearing the door off the hinges in her enthusiasm, she arranged to move in with a friend for a while. She wrote Jonathan a long letter saying she loved him, too, and would keep the keys. But before she moved in, she wanted to visit his parents and her parents together. She wanted to talk about the place of Jonathan’s daughter in the scheme of things, and about her own desire to have children. She even wanted to go to a marriage counselor to have some outside expert help them locate the land mines. She wanted as few surprises as possible. She wanted to do as much of the hard work in the beginning as possible.
And she explained to Jonathan that her grandfather had to smell him first.
BEING INCLUSIVE
This is a “mixed marriage.” All you have to do is consider the names to guess at least a mix of Jewish, Irish, Hispanic, Catholic, Protestant, East Coast, West Coast, and in-between. The guest list was a mix of old, young, married, single, divorced, straight, gay, Republican, Democrat, atheist, agnostic, and confused.
I don’t consider this unique.
It is my experience that most weddings are “mixed marriages.”
It is a reflection of our times and our culture. The great mobility of all those who live in this great melting-pot-mixing-bowl country of ours has profoundly affected our choice of mates and the composition of the witnesses at our public rituals. When this is the case, it is a major mistake to ignore it or not include it in the wedding considerations.
The choice of the Fairview Community Center as a site for the celebration is one small indication that the bride and groom wanted to be inclusive—to make as many people feel comfortable as possible.
Why a mini-reception before the service?
Actually, it’s not such a wiggy idea. It’s a thoughtful, common-sense way to make a mix of strangers welcome at a mixed marriage. Or at almost any public celebration of a rite of passage. There are good reasons. In this case, the family members were scattered across the country, and nobody lived in Ohio. Friends also were scattered—and the friendships were made at different stages in the lives of the bride and groom and their families. Even the parents had moved, so that neither set lived where their children had grown up—especially true for Jonathan’s family. This is the nature of life in urban America in the late twentieth century. It needs to be taken into consideration at weddings, funerals, graduations, and other occasions where we know the gathered group are strangers to one another.
So, the wedding was held in the city where the bride and groom lived and had the most recent and active set of friends and acquaintances. The pre-reception helped put people at ease and increased the odds that people would get somewhat acquainted and at least know who the family members were before the ceremony. It was a sound gesture of inclusion, reflecting the desire to be as considerate as possible of people and circumstances.
The bride nailed it when she said, “The first time all I thought about was me, me, me. This time, it’s about us—all of us.”
Here’s the crux of the matter. The mini-reception idea worked.
So well, in fact, that I’ve often urged it be done. It allows for a graceful reception of latecomers (weddings never start on time), gives early and on-time-comers a comfortable social experience, and allows an opportunity of welcome, inclusion, introduction, and establishment of community. The guests went into the social hall as strangers. They headed for the ceremony from the social hall more as a congregation of people united in purpose. They had met, talked, laughed, and applauded—even learned a part. They knew what to expect and knew they were needed. Above all, they knew there would not be a real wedding without them.
Compare this to all the times you attended weddings where all you did was occupy a seat while something you could not see or hear happened a long distance from you. For all it mattered, your place could have been taken by a hundred-pound sack of sand with a smiley face drawn on it. Afterward, you went to the reception, where you waited in a long line to briefly meet people you would never see again, waited in line for food you don’t usually eat, and drank cheap champagne to toast a couple whose marriage you would not give even odds on lasting a year. After that you could have danced to music you can’t stand, but you went home. It was a little better than a cocktail party. But not much. I’m exaggerating. But not much.
And if you think I’m getting a little pushy about this, you’re right.
When public rituals fail, they fail because they were not inclusive in spirit.
The Golden Rule applies most emphatically to public rituals.
TRADITION
About the music. The wedding music. Any “traditional” music. Having some good information about tradition makes reform easier. Mary Carrie and Jonathan didn’t want the traditional wedding music—partly because it had been played at the first wedding for both of them. But they were reluctant to leave out too much tradition—their parents liked the music, and besides, they didn’t know what to substitute.
(The music under discussion here is the “Bridal Chorus” from Richard Wagner’s 1848 opera Lohengrin, and the “Wedding March” from Felix Mendelssohn’s 1826 A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Vernacularly referred to as “Here Comes the Bride,” and “There Goes the Bride.”)
I explained that they would be relieved to know the usual wedding march and recessional were not church music and had not been in use for very long. Besides, they didn’t have to do what Vicky and Fritz had done.
Vicky and Fritz?
The European royal “wedding of the century” on January 25, 1858, matched Princess Victoria, eldest daughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria, with Prince Frederick William of Prussia, eldest son of the emperor of Germany.
Princess Victoria selected the music herself.
For one thing, she made good and appropriate choices—credit is due.
For another, she really liked the music.
As did the English, apparently, for in no time at all, nobility and commoners alike were not only marching down aisles to the same tunes but holding wedding ceremonies that imitated as closely as possible the dress, pomp, and circumstance of that royal example.
The marriage of Vicky and Fritz set the standard of their day and ours. By all accounts, it was a pull-out-all-stops humdinger, and we’ve been doing our best to keep it up to this very day. Just check the bridal fashion magazines (phone-book thick). The so-called classic American Wedding is more or less an imitation of a British middle-class imitation of a princess’s royal wedding of 145 years ago. Lady Diana’s wedding to Prince Charles and our fascination with it is a modern-day example of the effect Vicky and Fritz’s wedding continues to have.
Odd, isn’t it, that the most democratic nation on earth should have such interest in royal standards and behavior? By all accounts and polls, the British royal family ranks higher in favor in the United States than in Great Britain.
Interesting, too, that not since the wedding of Elizabeth and Philip has an English royal marriage gone well, despite the glorious weddings televised to all the world. Is there a clue here?
Don’t miss this. It is always the case that what we think of as traditional is a case of somebody, somewhere back there in history, deciding the old way didn’t work for them, so they came up with something that did. We can do the same thing.
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The dress. Can’t talk about a wedding without talking about “the dress.”
Mary Carrie had bought the princess gown the first time around. It was the first thing she did after becoming engaged. The very next day her mom and she went off to try on dress
es. Had a couple of huge fights before they agreed on the Cinderella gown-of-gowns—a full meringue—a lacy, pearly, satiny number with veil and train. More time and thought and money went into the bride’s outfit than any other single item connected to the wedding. This is generally the case.
Veil, underwear, gloves, shoes, and dress-with-caboose had cost a bundle. She was embarrassed to mention the actual amount; she couldn’t afford it, and her parents couldn’t afford it. Still, they all kept saying, “But you only get married once”—and what would their friends think if they didn’t do it right, etc., etc.
She wore it once—for a total of three hours.
In time, she hated that dress. Really loathed that dress.
The day she filed her divorce papers, she put the princess dress in a black plastic garbage bag and dropped it in a collection box for a rummage sale.
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And the tuxedo.
Designed by Edward the Prince of Wales as a practical dinner jacket, and given its American name after it was first worn at a country club in Tuxedo Park, New York, in the late 1890s, the tuxedo has now become required attire for grooms and waiters.
For his first “happiest day of his life,” Jonathan had gone a step further and rented a full formal morning suit: swallow-tailed coat, striped trousers, starched shirt and dicky, vest, foulard, suspenders, black patent-leather shoes, cuff links, and stickpin. All inspired by Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, and worn by our model, Prince Fritz, at that “wedding of the century.” Jonathan even went for the top hat. The spats and the walking cane seemed a bit much, but they were available.
His best friend told him he looked like Fred Astaire with a thyroid problem. Maybe Fritz-the-Prince felt cool in this getup, but Jonathan felt like a fool—as if he were going to a costume party. But he had no choice. It was what “went with the bride’s dress” and the time of day of the wedding, and it was what his bride and her mom wanted, so what-the-hell. Just do it, don’t think about it.
It cost him four hundred dollars. And it smelled funny. He wondered how many other guys had worn the stuff before him. The only part of the outfit he owned was the black knee hose, which he later used to play soccer in, and his own boxer shorts, which were not new. He thinks that when that pair of boxer shorts wore out, he used them as a shoe-polishing rag. He’s got nothing to show for his four hundred dollars.
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Amazing. The bride’s dress dictating everything else to do with the wedding. How much sense does it make to spend such a substantial amount of money for a dress to wear once? Or for the groom to rent an outfit, when if he bought the outfit he could at least get a job wearing it—as a headwaiter or a butler or a funeral director or a character in a play? Since when must a wedding be a costume ball? The Victorian Age is over.
We dress for “them.” You know—“them,” the invisible people who dictate fashion—people we do not know and never see, yet who must approve of our appearance. It’s just big business to “them.” Still, we dress for “them”—when we should dress for those we know. Mary Carrie got it right the second time. She wanted the groom to help her pick out her dress—she wanted to please him, too. “How shall I look for you?” she asked Jonathan. He said, in his whimsical way, “Like a daffodil.”
Wonderful! Yellow and orange and white and green! She had a dress made she could dance in and wear on special occasions. And her shoes were leaf-green leather, with a strap across the arch—real dancing shoes. She didn’t want to pretend to be a princess. She wanted to be just who she was—Mary Carrie Goldman, citizen, woman, beloved of Jonathan Carlos McCarthy.
The groom’s apparel was another matter. Jonathan is not really a suit-and-tie kind of guy. You can imagine the discussions. White summer tux outfit? No. Yellow or white or orange or green suit to match the bride? No. Pinstripe business suit? No. Naked? No. Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts? No. But what?
The Hawaiian shirt suggestion rang a bell with his father, who had purchased a fine ivory-colored linen suit to wear at his retirement party when he left the navy. He had not worn it since. Somehow it reminded him and Jonathan of how Bogart looked in Casablanca. A few alterations and it would fit. Yes. His father was pleased. The bride was ecstatic. Yes, indeed! Bring on Bogey!
Jonathan dressed like Bogey? Is there a contradiction here? Of course. Some fantasy always creeps into our celebrations, as well it should.
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When it came to the ceremony, we spent more time on the single issue of who walked down the aisle with whom and who stood where than anything else in the wedding. This is always the case. That seventeen seconds takes weeks to get straight. People know a lot about pecking orders and symmetry, and spend time on what they know about.
The stepparent issue is, was, and always will be a land-mine area.
It was clear that while the parents and their new mates were determined to cooperate and not make trouble, everybody knew very well that there was some old, unsorted garbage lying in the corners. This is likewise true at funerals, graduations, recitals, and all family dress parades.
There were some tense moments as we tried to find solutions. And a State Department protocol expert could not have worked this out to the perfect satisfaction of everyone. There was heavy baggage from the past here that nobody wanted to sort out, but nobody could pretend it wasn’t there, either. Jonathan said his mom would like to get her hands on his father one last time, just to leave a few scars. But the mother kept her cool and sat on her hands, at least in public.
It helped to have everyone involved in the problem. It doesn’t always happen like this. I could tell you some nasty stories. But it can work out—it just takes grown-ups to do it. And sometimes grown-ups show up to do the work.
I emphasize: Being inclusive helps.
The bride and groom walked down the aisle with all their parents to honor their relationship with them. All the parents got at the first weddings was a front-row seat; otherwise, they were spectators. A painful experience for them.
Her father did walk her down the aisle that time and gave her away when asked, but neither he nor Mary Carrie liked it—they did it because they thought they were supposed to. The idea in this day and age of anybody giving anybody away as property to another, male or female, seems absurd. But the idea of having your parents be an important part of your wedding is not. It is a very traditional notion, actually—and a tradition worth keeping.
They walked down the aisle with their parents because they both began to understand that their parents had always been there for them and that their presence should be honored. As Mary Carrie and Jonathan got older, the more they realized the importance of their parents in their lives—and the more they valued family. I observe that this realization always takes time.
There were no matching sets of bridesmaids and groomsmen. If you remember, the bride and groom each asked the closest members of their immediate family to walk with them and stand by them, along with one really close friend. And all were asked to dress up as it pleased them, as it made them feel right. Nobody had to fit a theme, and nobody had to match. Let’s get real here: Most human beings do not come in matching sets.
As it turned out, everyone looked just right—not like dukes and duchesses or men-at-arms. They came as who they were—like family, all dressed up for something special. Only the groom’s grandmother stood out—she was smashing in a bright pink dress with hat to match. But as I said, everyone looked just right.
“We want to include our families in the actual service somehow. Is that possible?” Of course. Not only possible, but I think it’s necessary. Besides, I emphasize that it’s a very traditional thing to do. Up until the twelfth century in Europe, a wedding was always a family affair, and in most cultures worldwide it still is. But when the concept of romantic love and chivalry got loose in Western culture, family ties got left out, and the arranged marriage was replaced by love, sweet love. So much so that it is not uncommon for families to meet for the first tim
e the day before the wedding and not ever meet again unless somebody dies.
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You may have noticed a lack of symmetry in the wedding service. Not everybody said or did the same thing in the same way, even if they had similar roles. This, too, is compatible with longstanding tradition. A Jewish carpenter once noted that “the Sabbath was made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath.” And weddings were made for people, not the other way around. People must not be forced to fit the form—the form must fit the participants. When it does not, it must be re-formed.
For example, not only was the bride’s stepmother much beloved by Mary Carrie and her father, but Abe is a large, powerful, confident, and terribly sentimental man. Given half a chance, he will turn a ritual line into a long-winded and tearful speech, personally blessing everyone present, in the name of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the great Jews who ever lived. He admits it. It’s a family joke. His second wife is a teacher—confident in public and strict about sticking to the words of the text. It was Abe’s idea that she speak for the family, thereby pleasing all.
Notice, in passing, how many opportunities a wedding has for secondary celebration of relationships. A wedding is both a union and a reunion. Consider how many of those involved want and need recognition and affirmation of their place in the life of the bride and groom. Friends, family, even special acquaintances, can be included in ways that will leave you and them more intimately bound together. The part played by Mary’s stepmother is a great example.
HUMAN EVENTS
When I meet with the bride and groom the last time, I make a speech:
Weddings are a lot like any other occasion in life. Anything can happen.
The great banana peel of existence is always on the floor somewhere.
Not only that, anything might go right!
Sometimes the unexpected is an unforgettable moment that transforms a standard wedding into a memorable experience. The sweetest memories are seldom the result of planning. Forget fashion shows, forget a performance, forget perfection. Whatever happens gets acknowledged and included. Whatever happens, we work it in.
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